Rebel Arms Flow Is Said to Benefit Jihadists in Syria

WASHINGTON — Most of the arms shipped at the behest of
Saudi Arabia and Qatar
to supply Syrian rebel groups fighting the government of Bashar al-Assad
are going to hard-line Islamic jihadists, and not the more secular opposition groups that the West wants to bolster, according to American officials and Middle Eastern diplomats.

That conclusion, of which President Obama and other senior officials are aware from classified assessments of the Syrian conflict that has now claimed more than 25,000 lives, casts into doubt whether the White House’s strategy of minimal and indirect intervention in the Syrian conflict is accomplishing its intended purpose of helping a democratic-minded opposition topple an oppressive government, or is instead sowing the seeds of future insurgencies hostile to the United States.

“The opposition groups that are receiving the most of the lethal aid are exactly the ones we don’t want to have it,” said one American official familiar with the outlines of those findings, commenting on an operation that in American eyes has increasingly gone awry.

The United States is not sending arms directly to the Syrian opposition. Instead, it is providing intelligence and other support for shipments of secondhand light weapons like rifles and grenades into
Syria, mainly orchestrated from Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The reports indicate that the shipments organized from Qatar, in particular, are largely going to hard-line Islamists.

The assessment of the arms flows comes at a crucial time for Mr. Obama, in the closing weeks of the election campaign with two debates looming that will focus on his foreign policy record. But it also calls into question the Syria strategy laid out by Mitt Romney, his Republican challenger.

In a speech at the Virginia Military Institute last Monday, Mr. Romney said he would ensure that rebel groups “who share our values” would “obtain the arms they need to defeat Assad’s tanks, helicopters and fighter jets.” That suggests he would approve the transfer of weapons like antiaircraft and antitank systems that are much more potent than any the United States has been willing to put into rebel hands so far, precisely because American officials cannot be certain who will ultimately be using them.

But Mr. Romney stopped short of saying that he would have the United States provide those arms directly, and his aides said he would instead rely on Arab allies to do it. That would leave him, like Mr. Obama, with little direct control over the distribution of the arms.

American officials have been trying to understand why hard-line Islamists have received the lion’s share of the arms shipped to the Syrian opposition through the shadowy pipeline with roots in Qatar, and, to a lesser degree, Saudi Arabia. The officials, voicing frustration, say there is no central clearinghouse for the shipments, and no effective way of vetting the groups that ultimately receive them.

Those problems were central concerns for the director of the
Central Intelligence Agency, David H. Petraeus, when he traveled secretly to Turkey last month, officials said.

The C.I.A. has not commented on Mr. Petraeus’s trip, made to a region he knows well from his days as the Army general in charge of Central Command, which is responsible for all American military operations in the Middle East. Officials of countries in the region say that Mr. Petraeus has been deeply involved in trying to steer the supply effort, though American officials dispute that assertion.

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One Middle Eastern diplomat who has dealt extensively with the C.I.A. on the issue said that Mr. Petraeus’s goal was to oversee the process of “vetting, and then shaping, an opposition that the U.S. thinks it can work with.” According to American and Arab officials, the C.I.A.
has sent officers to Turkey
to help direct the aid, but the agency has been hampered by a lack of good intelligence about many rebel figures and factions.

Another Middle Eastern diplomat whose government has supported the Syrian rebels said his country’s political leadership was discouraged by the lack of organization and the ineffectiveness of the disjointed Syrian opposition movement, and had raised its concerns with American officials. The diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was discussing delicate intelligence issues, said the various rebel groups had failed to assemble a clear military plan, lacked a coherent blueprint for governing Syria afterward if the Assad government fell, and quarreled too often among themselves, undercutting their military and political effectiveness.

“We haven’t seen anyone step up to take a leadership role for what happens after Assad,” the diplomat said. “There’s not much of anything that’s encouraging. We should have lowered our expectations.”

The disorganization is strengthening the hand of Islamic extremist groups in Syria, some with ties or affiliations with
Al Qaeda, he said: “The longer this goes on, the more likely those groups will gain strength.”

American officials worry that, should Mr. Assad be ousted, Syria could erupt afterward into a new conflict over control of the country, in which the more hard-line Islamic groups would be the best armed. That depends on what happens in the arms bazaar that has been feeding the rebel groups. In several towns along the Turkey-Syria border, rebel commanders can be found seeking weapons and meeting with shadowy intermediaries, in a chaotic atmosphere where the true identities and affiliations of any party can be extremely difficult to ascertain.

Late last month in the Turkish border town of Antakya, at least two men who had recently been in Syria said they had seen Islamist rebels buying weapons in large quantities and then burying them in caches, to be used after the collapse of the Assad government. But it was impossible to verify these accounts, and other rebels derided the reports as wildly implausible.

Moreover, the rebels often adapt their language and appearance in ways they hope will appeal to those distributing weapons. For instance, many rebels have grown the long, scraggly beards favored by hard-line Salafi Muslims after hearing that Qatar was more inclined to give weapons to Islamists.

The Saudis and Qataris are themselves relying on intermediaries — some of them Lebanese — who have struggled to make sense of the complex affiliations of the rebels they deal with.

“We’re trying to improve the process,” said one Arab official involved in the effort to provide small arms to the rebels. “It is a very complex situation in Syria, but we are learning.”

Robert F. Worth and Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington.

A version of this article appears in print on October 15, 2012, on Page A1 of the
New York edition
with the headline: Rebel Arms Flow Is Said to Benefit Jihadists in Syria. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

Willy Van Damme

The portrait painted by Western media and ngos of the Syrian conflict so far is so far out of touch with the reality it is shocking and a slap in the face of ordinary Syrians. One can only hope Assad wins this conflict. If not the lights will go out all over Syria. And this will be thanks to Western media, Western Governments and Western ngos.

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TH51

It's already been said: "Libya implodes. Egypt implodes. Syria explodes." To think it is as simple as delivering arms to moderate or secular Syrian rebels and then everything is fine and US national interests are secured is short-sighted.

Think about all the other rebellions or civil wars in the past few decades. What happens when you give even a secular or moderate group of armed insurgents a load of weapons, and then they win and become young, disillusioned individuals who have no prospects for jobs in a collapsed economy but plenty of weapons and extensive military experience? They go fight the next war, any war, real or perceived. Right now, I'm perceiving that Western-friendly countries in the region and Israel seem like good targets. Ironically, Assad might be a vital piece of Israeli national security.

Economics applies too: if we give moderate rebels arms, then the price of weapons on the black market as a whole drops. Well-funded jihadist groups, instead of poor moderate groups, will simply buy more weapons anyways.

Syria is not like Libya. The Syrian civil war is a huge proxy fight between the Gulf States + Turkey, Iran + Russia. Who knows what will happen if and when Assad falls, even if moderate groups somehow win the ensuing civil war against the jihadists. It's unclear if even the moderate groups are or will be pro-American (I doubt it). The entire place is messy and unclear and we should stay as far away from the inevitable explosion as possible.

Observer from the North

What many people in U.S. fail to understand is that in the Middle East, European ideas has nevertheless encroached somehow in very mid eastern style through the Baath party both in Iraq and Syria. The ideology behind those parties was the secular republic promoted by France and to some extent also by Germany. In the twentieth century both countries saw a growing number of university and scholars grounded in those secular ideas with increasing number of women acceding to high education. In those regimes Christianity, and by the way, all other minorities were respected and flourishing. Suddenly, by the obtuse unilateral U.S. siding with Israel those countries were perceived as «enemies». And Obtuse number #1 the Bush/Cheney/Rice tandem declared war against Iraq. The disastrous results were apprehended by the intelligentsia around the world but no way to change the course. Nowadays we’re assisting to the same scenario with the destruction of the last Baath Party, in Syria, again the secular bastion against intolerance. Will Obama follow the same path as his predecessor ?

John Darling

Perhaps someone can answer this question for me: what is the different between a ME "Jihadist" and an American gone postal? What is the difference in the results? Can anyone tell me? Anyone?

And while I'm asking, I may as well further inquire if anyone knows where those weapons that have fallen on the hands of the "Jihadists" are coming from. And those who naively say Qatar and Saudi Arabia, I'll answer with a further question: where exactly are they getting those weapons from in turn?

No matter how you slice it, behind every pocket of trouble in the world, there's the hairy hand of the US. Behind every pocket of instability, violence and chaos in the Middle East, there is the hairy hand of the US and the warped paw of Isreal.

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Andres

Rebel arms flow is said to benefit Jihadists in Syria? Here's a question the NYT doesn't dare ask: who exactly is providing those weapons to them, huh? I'll give you a hint, stars with U and ends with an A and it only has one more letter in between those two. If you still have no clue who I'm talking about, then, look at Afghanistan and Libya and you'll have an idea. And that would be one of the reasons why Gore Videl referred to the US as the "United States of Amnesia"

DC 777

Whatever Spring they called. It has always been the minority Shiite in power against the majority Sunni without power. Whatever they call themselves, Free, Democratic, Jahadists... It is always going back to Sunni majority trying to take the power back from the ruling Shiite. Does it make any sense? Know how to formulate a strategy based on that fundamental reality and not based on one's preferred ideology?

Seahawk Nation

HOW DO THESE PEOPLE STILL HAVE A JOB AND GET AIRTIME? - I find it funny that people like John Bolton can shamelessly get on Fox and make the same recommendations to fix Libya and Syria as he did for invading Iraq. Yesterday, I heard him say that the answer to Syria and Libya is to not lead from behind. WRONG - how about not invade functioning countries with an economy, peace and stability from the beginning? And he still thinks we should arm the rebels (like we did Al Qaeda to turnback Russia) to over throw Assad. These people are idiots. Yet we're outraged when these same terrorists who drug Qaddafi into the streets of Libya are doing the same to the US Ambassador. Are we surprised? The whole approach needs to change. My fear is that Romney and ex-Bush clan are chomping at the bit to finish what the Bush Admin started - scary!!!!

Patrick Kennedy / State Dept - watching the Senate Hearing on the Amb Davis' death I noticed his face is the same one from the Underwear Bombing Senate Hearing. He was employed in the State Dept and was one of he people who allowed a known terrorists people (Underwear Bomber) to board a plane headed to the USA for tracking purposes. We've heard that before. Track terrorists my behind!!! If a person is a terrorist you don't let them board anything. This guy is again caught up in a national story. Shouldn't he be ousted from the public sector? This guy is completely reckless and a national security risk.

Jerry Chesler

Syria is a snake pit that provides no options that are good for the US. At most, we should knock out Asad's air defenses and establish a no fly zone over Syria, so the rebels have a fighting chance. But providing more sophisticated arms would be a huge mistake. Despite what that war-mongering candidate says in order to sound tough.

We already have seen the folly of arming our part time friends. They may become our enemies as soon as it suits them. We armed the Afghan rebels so they could fight the Russians. Those same weapons were then (and are still being) used against us UBL and his AQ friends. The Russians are still mad at us about that.

Why is it no surprise that weapons provided by the Saudis and Qataris are finding their way to the worst of the jihadists? The entire jihadist doctrine comes from our friends in Saudi. Weren't all of the 9/11 hijackers Saudis as well. W did not like to implicate his Saudi friends, but we should get over that.

I have a friend who has traveled to Afghanistan many times over many years. She was shocked when Wahabi-ism caught on there. She totally blamed the Saudis and was horrified about the new Afghan attitude toward women. This was the product of a Saudi elite, UBL, bringing Saudi fundamentalism to them.

The candidate who wants to arm these people is very much wrong. Had he bothered to go to Viet Nam, he might know that you can't kill an idea. Just because the Saudis are rich like him, does not mean we can trust them like W did.

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Uziel Nogueira

The US elite that runs foreign policy never learns from past mistakes. The law of unintended consequences was never grasped by these people. Now, anti-aircraft heat seeking portable missiles are the hands of Islamic jihadists fighting the Assad regime. Saudi Arabia, the closest US oil producing ally in the Middle East -- after Israel, of course -- is buying and shipping such lethal materiel. It makes sense. Saudi nationals have a keen interest in airplanes.

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Sunny20

How anyone can attack Romney for this particular idiocy is beyond me. Obama has been funding alQaeda in Syria for months. This is not new, it is just news to apologists who simply refuse to see that radical Islam has been installed throughout the Middle East, and isn't going to go away. Is there any integrity left in liberal land? Now the US is "rushing" to train Libyan commandos, i.e., more American boots on the ground, more money, and another war in the making. Just leave Romney out of this. It's Obama, for worse or for better.

W.A. Spitzer

First he attacks the administration for not arming the Syrian opposition and than he attacks the administration for putting weapons in the hands of Islamist extremists. But than nobody in the media seems to care that he has repeatedly changed his position to the point where nobody knows what he really believes - presuming of course that he believes anything.

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William Dufort

All of America's Arab allies in the region, past and present are/were brutal dictators who reward their cronies and crush all opposition, mostly Islamists of all varieties. Being aligned with America has always been associated with power and money. Even Saddam Hussein! Remember his chummy-chummy picture with Dick Cheney?

So why be surprised that such allies aren't reliable? And if you were a Syrian Idealist, why would you trust America to be on the right side, this time? Doesn't history repeat itself?

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Leon Stephens

The governments, that is, dynasties of Saudi Arabia and Qatar are infamously fanatical religious fundamentalists.

The US is using these Islamist allies to distribute arms to the so-called rebels in Syria, the large majority of whom are not Syrian, and who therefore must be Islamist fanatics, because no other non-Syrians would have the slightest motivation for entering into such a struggle.

And now US officials are "trying hard to understand" how these arms are getting into the "wrong hands". And just what hands would they expect them to get into? And only now, after twenty months of mass murder, destruction and rapine attributed by the press exclusively to the Assad regime, as if the "rebels" were innocent Boy Scouts and not fanatics bent on persecuting and murdering Christians and all non-Sunni Muslims, especially supporters of the regime, of whom in fact there are a great many (often the case with authoritarian regimes which provide economic security at least to those who are willing to keep their mouths shut), only now, I say, are they getting a glimpse of what is actually going on.

The use of simple logic will tell us that these officials, including the intelligence agencies, the President and the General Staff, are either absolute morons or that that they have been playing a very dirty game all this time and are trying to wriggle out of the situation, the truth of which is becoming ever more widely known. Or that both are true, the most likely conclusion.

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atolstoy

Turkey and US de-facto provides logistical and intelligence support to arms shipments from Quatar to the hard- line Islamists. This is a familiar picture - the way the Taliban was nurtured by the CIA in the 1980s.
Quatar is supposedly an American ally, but it supports jihadis.
May be it would be a better policy for Obama administration to press Quatar and Saudi Arabia to stop their weapons transfers to Syria?

miklos halasz

At the end of the 1890th had a loody uprising there with the turkis involved
in the atles a Polish general he was in the hungarian uprising revolution led the armies 1849 he went to Aleppo anddied at a atle . hje is a national hero of the polish and the hungarians in the syrian war lost his life as if history repeat itself ..

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Tom

Interesting ironies about here, especially reading the comments. We live in a country that has killed at least 100,000 in Iraq. During my lifetime this country killed at least 2 million (yes, million) in Vietnam alone. They there were the tens of thousands in the Dominican Republic, 1965. And upwards of 1 million (done by proxy) in Indonesia. The list could go on.

But posters here call someone else "brutal" ??? Shakespeare could write a soliloquy to this that would make Marc Antony's seem tame. After all, the US Presidents are honorable men, are they not?

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DC 777

blackmamba

Is this a rerun of Afghanistan where American arms and money flowed into Mullah Omar, Osama Bin Laden, Ahmad Shah Massoud, the Haqqani Network and other war lords to blunt the Soviet Union invasion and occupation of Afghanistan?

Romney/Ryan, McCain and Graham with their usual intemperate reckless fickle idiocy want to rush right in with out a plan or objective or figuring out the consequences including when and how get out of this mess. After the debacles in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan Americans should be wary and humble about our insight and influence.

America's record when intervening in Asian civil wars involving ethnic groups and faiths that America does not understand in any significant sense is poor. Deterimining who are the bad guys and the good guys in Syria is not easy.

America has supported secular and theocratic and royal dictators. Speaking with disapproval of Assad "killing his own people" shows an ignorance of the meaning of civil war and fighting domestic terrorism. Lincoln and Davis killed more Americans than any one. Russia and China rather than behaving despicably have their own values and interests to follow.

Finding American interests and values in this bloody boiling cauldron maelstrom guarantees failure the farther America wanders from it's long term essential values and focuses on it's perceived short term interests. We are not that clever nor knowledgeable.

Syria and Iran are looming black holes. Will we ever learn?

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RC

"Deterimining who are the bad guys and the good guys in Syria is not easy."

This is the case for you in your perception... but for many other observers and pundits from within Syria, the ME and Muslim world, and across the globe... the determination of who the *armed and fighting* guys are in Syria is clearly and obviously transparent.

They are self-defining jihadists that desire to establish a Syrian state that is part of the Islamic Caliphate, based upon strict Shariah law, where an ancient dogma, the Quran, will be their *Constitution*... which is the agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Libya... and elsewhere.

blackmamba... especially if you're a woman... relocate to Islamabad or Karachi or even Cairo for a year or two.... and if you're a non-Muslim woman, get back to the NYT commentariat with your account of the racist, xenophobic, and intolerant (and dangerous) situation that you've experienced.

BTW. I'm surprised that you didn't manage to fit in a comment regarding "Jim Crow" in your comment... which you regularly do.

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tom mcmahon

Through no fault of the Obama Administration Syria and Turkey are headed for the showdown of military's on the border between the two. Turkey's NATO backing, Syria's inability to grasp what is about to happen. Refugees, weapons, money, Islamic fundimentalists now converging, all are the necessary events, persons, and materials that will bring war. Not just a Syrian inside civil, or Turkish/Syria war, a much wider war is about to emerge. Personnally I'd rather have Obama/Biden leading the way with now four years of success against terror and mid east political upheavals in lieu of Romney/Ryan chicken hawks, But then again dead is dead, and many will die in the coming mid east wars that emerge. Syria/Turkey/NATO alongside Israeli Iran debacle that can literally blow up in everyones face. I hope what I see is not going to happen, but reality strikes harder than hope.

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eirini ozgunes

Almost all the opposition fighters in Syria are Jihadists anyway. If they prevail terrible times are waiting for the 3 million Christians in Syria. Please see the realities of the Middle East for Christ's sake!

geochandler

Obama's under no illusions about the character of the rebels. But he's trying to make it possible to have some influence after the inevitable fall of Assad without adding to the mountain of munitions in jihadist hands. Romney's stated strategy would be no different.

Leon Stephens

You've almost hit the nail on the head, Metastasis. Th only answer is to ask the question: What bloody right does the US government have to determine who is to govern all the other nations of the earth? And when you hear the chorus saying that God created America to bring democracy and Jesus to the suffering and misguided peoples of the world, then you'll know where the real fanatics have their headquarters.

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T. Ramakrishnan

The reality is that there is no liberal or social democratic movement in the Middle East. Turkey, a NATO ally, stable, progressive and secular, is evolving from an army-guided democrasy towards genuine democracy and moderate Islamism (no more confessional than the religious Right of U.S., Europe, India or Israel). Her attempts at forcible 'absorption' of ethnic minorities, especially the Kurds, is a weakness that limits her potential leadership role in the region. The Arab secularists, almost all undemocratic, are being replaced by partisans of Saudi Arabia or Iran --- the springheads and exporters of Sunni-Shea sectarianism and militancy.

A democratic, modernist, secular, non-ethnocentric Syria is a tall order. We cannot do it by force, persuasion or diplomacy. Supporting Turkey and giving her a free hand may be the least harmful option. But even this may upset the Kurds (only reliable ally in Iraq) and Israel's regional hegemony.

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Judyw

I would never aid Turkey. I think Erdogan can no longer be trusted. He is moving away from the former secular model and turning Turkey into anohter Islamist state. The AKP party is Islamist and he is quietly abolishing or chaning the secular laws that previously extisted. Turkey is supporting the rebels because of their Islamist ties. Turkey is NO LONGER a reliable ally.